ABSTRACT
In the plays we have just looked at, much of the comic tension sprang from confrontations between characters inhabiting different orders of experience, reflected often by collisions of style. The Taming of the Shrew opens with a similar effect, but takes it one stage further. The wonder felt by Antipholus of Syracuse at confronting a new world is now accompanied by an actual transformation of character. There is at first an obvious contrast in style between the racy prose of Christopher Sly and the more formal verse of the Lord and his servants. But as they practise on his imagination, telling him of the rich life that is rightfully his, he slips into verse, with some attempt at dignity; 1 he crosses the border between one experience and another. In our eyes, of course, he never ceases to be Christopher Sly, and this gives his new role a comic piquancy (with a touch of pathos, if the actor wants to exploit it); but he is Christopher Sly with his mind opened to new possibilities, and — like the lovers of A Midsummer Night's Dream, waking up after their night in the forest — unsure of what is dream and what is reality: Am I a lord and have I such a lady? Or do I dream? Or have I dream'd till now? I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak; I smell sweet savours, and I feel soft things. Upon my life, I am a lord indeed, And not a tinker, nor Christophen) Sly. (Induction, ii. 66–71)
